Mourning season

For those who grieve, attentive ear may be best gift.

By ROGER MARTIN

Special to The Capital-Journal

For some people, the grieving season has begun in earnest.

When they hear those sleigh bells jingle, they tingle with sadness. They would like to pop the little drummer boy in the nose.

How can we comfort those who mourn? I got a few ideas about that at a recent seminar in Manhattan. A therapist from Georgetown Family Center, Dan Papero, was advising mental health professionals about how to approach their clients.

"Discipline is required," he said. "You have to manage your urge to help."

The idea is to quit trying to fix up those who have taken a hit. Don't editorialize about their situation; don't tell them: "Dearie, life'll get back to normal. You'll see." Don't provide them a plan. Even if you mean well, they may wind up feeling smaller --- and they are feeling small enough already.

Is there anything you can say? A famous therapist, Carl Rogers, understood that it helps people if you paraphrase and summarize the thoughts and feelings they have shared. People who have had a loss feel sealed off from the world. If you echo them, you help them see they aren't alone in a coffin of grief.

Sometimes, grief will produce numbness rather than tears. In that case, you can gently encourage the loved one to feel more.

Marsha Read, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Kansas Medical Center, says if a person lops off grief, a capacity for joy, too, is lost. A person who can't be afraid, can't be vulnerable; who can't rage, can't later rediscover passion.

How else can you be helpful? Papero, quoting the late Murray Bowen, the pioneer of a psychological approach called family systems theory, stressed the importance of asking questions.

"Researchers ask questions in order to understand, not in an attempt to change," Papero said. "The research attitude is, in itself, healing to a person in distress. You don't ask leading questions either. You don't pretend to have the answer."

You may start to feel critical or judgmental about what the other person says. That may be less revealing about the other person and more revealing of you than you would like to think.

Papero has learned that when he starts feeling critical or judgmental, it means his own anxiety is shooting up. He has learned when he has no response, that is an anxiety signal.

Here is what I suggest. If you know a family member or a friend who has had a rough year and you want to help, ask him or her a question. And then another. And another.

That might sound hard. You may be afraid of walking, uninvited, into another's mourning. But I think it is worth the risk. People sometimes want to unload but are too ashamed of their loss of control to begin.

Looking for a great gift for a friend in need? Try questions coupled with undivided attention and laced with profound care. Oh, and give up dispensing advice, OK?

The only risk I can see is that if we did stuff like this for each other, we might have a national outbreak of intimacy on our hands.

Season

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